Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Community Archives in Singapore
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Applicant details[edit]
Wikimedia username(s):
- hello@mycommunity.org.sg
Organization:
- My Community
G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?
- Did not apply previously
H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?
- Yes
H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
- Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (Singapore)
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Additional information[edit]
R. Where will this proposal be implemented?
- Singapore
S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:
- Local
S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.
T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)
- www.mycommunity.org.sg
www.facebook.com/myqueenstown https://www.instagram.com/mycommunitysg/?hl=en
M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
- No
M1. Fiscal organization name.
- N/A
Proposal[edit]
1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?
Since its inception in 2010, My Community has made its mark in the heritage sector. Its work has spurred the growth of a common-man approach to history where everyday experiences of Singaporeans are chronicled.
Today, My Community’s core mission remains the same. The non-profit organisation works to capture community stories, reconnect people to social networks, and deepen heritage appreciation across the country. It also advocates for greater community involvement in cultural management.
2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?
My Community would like to work with the Wikimedia Movement to develop a community archive based on Wikidata and Wikibase. The objectives are: (1) Posterity: To preserve the stories of the everyday people, many of whom are underrepresented. (2) Accessibility: To create a digital archive that is accessible, secure and transparent. (3) Community-Centric: To empower communities to collect and develop community archives. (4) Sustainability: To establish a sustainable archive.
Community archives are archives created or accumulated, described, and/or preserved by individuals and community groups who desire to document their cultural heritage based on shared experiences, interests, and/or identities, sometimes without the traditional intervention of formally trained archivists, historians, and librarians.
My Community currently manages and operates a community archives in Queenstown and Tiong Bahru which collect numerous artefacts, maps, government documents and records, photographs and oral history interviews from the residents. We collect objects which document the history, culture and heritage of Queenstown and its environs; objects which celebrate and respond to the community of Queenstown; and objects which provide inspiration for learning and reflecting on place and social history.
There are four ways in which My Community collects artefacts, photographs and objects for our community archives: (1) Door-to-Door Befriending (2) Artefact Collection Drive (3) Emails (4) Donation.
Before the objects are ascensioned, they are assessed for its cultural significance based on its rarity, representativeness, geographical location, historical value, social value and aesthetic condition by 5 or more trained residents and volunteers. Residents' involvement in the collection development builds consciousness and empowers them to decide whether to collect the artefact on behalf of the community.
After the objects are assessed and ascensioned, the digitalisation process kicks in with 2D and 3D scanning, before legal release forms are completed. An object report will be created for each unique item with a unique object number.
The collections database excel is maintained by the volunteer archivists. Each item has its unique number and column in the database. Thereafter, the collections database is current published on Figshare for public access.
Here are our challenges: (1) Microsoft excel and figshare are useful softwares for developing our collection but they become difficult to use when we collect more artefacts. (2) Figshare's and other archives usually present their collection at the front-end through an inaccessible listing of information. This makes searches very difficult. Furthermore, maintenance of the archives at the backend is laborious and not user-friendly for older and less tech-savvy volunteers (3) Most of our artefacts come from residents and these often involve sensitive and private information. This means that the community archive must be professionally established to ensure the privacy of our residents' information. There also exists a need for the right expertise to maintain an archive due to the need to constantly refresh and upload content. (4) The cost of setting up and maintaining a community archive is very high. This includes rental (for the physical archive), conservation material, and a lot of time and manpower to maintain the archives.
3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.
My Community will achieve this objective by working with volunteers and residents on a design-thinking process:
Phase 1 (Empathy) - (1) My Community will work with the volunteers from the Community Archives team, residents and stakeholders to introduce the project During the introduction, we will encourage everyone to contribute their expertise and understand everyone's objectives for the archive. (2) My Community will also help recruit a professional archivist as well as volunteers who will assist with setting up the archive. Capacity building workshops on oral history interviews, information management system and masterclasses on Wikidata will be co-organised between My Community and Wikimedia community to help with skills transfer and build ownership to the archive. (3) My Community will review similar Wikimedia projects and our existing archival material including photographs, documents and publications. From the existing material that we will review, we will establish the best practices. (4) My Community will establish appropriate taxonomies and instances to classify our artefacts for Wikidata. We will start creating a wikibase of 100 artefacts and check with the Wikimedia community on its appopriateness
Phase 2: Define (1) Noting that heritage is multifarious and every stakeholder's objectives of the archive is diverse, a focus group discussion will be held to build consensus on the proposed takeaway of the archive user experience. This will be done with residents, volunteers and stakeholders.
Phase 3: Ideate (1) Based on the initial 100 artefacts as well as the agreed taxonomies and instances, My Community and our Community Archives volunteers will start creating a backend using Wikidata and Wikibase. This includes the overarching Wiki infrastructure as well as its ability to sync and embed on the website
Phase 4: Prototype (1) The community archives based on Wikidata will be tested among our volunteers and residents, and further refinements will be made to ensure its usability. (2) Based on the overarching framework, our team of staff and volunteers will begin upload other artefacts, objects, photographs onto Wikidata and Wikibases.
Phase 5: Launch (1) The initial phase of the archives based on Wikidata will be ready by June 2024 for residents, stakeholders and researchers to start browsing (2) We will organise seminars and workshops to involve more in co-managing the archives. We hope to present our community archives to the Wikimedia community in 2024
4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?
Volunteer recruitment drives will be organized to bring together residents and stakeholders for the project. After introducing the team to the project, we will encourage everyone to contribute their expertise and knowledge to it.
Focus group discussions will be held to build consensus on the proposed takeaway of the archive user experience. This will be done with residents, volunteers and stakeholders.
Artefact Collection: There are four ways in which My Community collects artefacts, photographs and objects for our community archives: (1) Door-to-Door Befriending (2) Artefact Collection Drive (3) Emails (4) Donation.
5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?
Yes, for 3 years
5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?
- We would like to seek a multi-year funding for our community archives. After the first year of the project, we will work with the Wikimedia team to evaluate the project and understand the areas which we can improve.
In the second and third-year of the project, we intend to engage a UIUX designer to design a website as the front-end of the community archives. This will be integrated to our existing website so that the end users can access the archives.
6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.
- See timeline document.
7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?
The Community Archive team who will be implementing this proposal includes two staff, Kwek Li Yong and Tan Li Qi as well as a team of volunteers and residents who work as librarians, archivists and informations scientists in the full-time day work.
(1) CV of Kwek Li Yong Li Yong, a heritage researcher and consultant, believes in adopting a participatory and community-centric approach to arts, cultural and heritage work. This principle guides My Community’s programmes, initiatives and ventures.He is now leading the 10-year-old organisation into its next phase of growth. Some of the projects he is spearheading include the group's first islandwide community heritage festival in partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board, a ground-up museum at Margaret Drive, as well as multi-year cultural mapping exercises in Tanglin Halt and Alexandra Village.
The Master’s degree holder in Heritage and Museum Studies from The University of Sydney has produced multiple independent research assessments and reports for government agencies including Tanglin Halt & Stirling, Dakota Crescent, Pulau Ubin and Jurong Lake Gardens for statutory agencies including the National Heritage Board and National Parks Board.
(2) Tan Li Qi Li Qi believes in the importance of documenting and capturing community histories - in particular, the stories of minority and displaced groups in land-scarce Singapore. Growing up surrounded by quaint 1930s Art Deco residences in the heritage-rich estate of Tiong Bahru, the history undergraduate at the National University of Singapore developed a keen interest in community heritage from a young age.
8. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.
Geography, Socioeconomic Status
8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.
My Community is a non-profit organisation that works with the community to preserve the common people story. We do so because the stories and memories of our everyday people are underrepresented in our national histories, school textbooks, and heritage sites. Our national archives tend to highlight the official history. We promote knowledge equity by empowering communities with the tools and platforms to share their stories and memories.
We ensure that our community archive is publicly accessible by putting them up on our website for free and making them open access. We also work with communities to turn these stories and memories into tours, experiences, and galleries to make them accessible to people of different literary and linguistic backgrounds.
9. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.
Culture, heritage or GLAM , Open Technology
10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.
Age, Digital Access
11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?
There are a number of ways which we will engage and retain participants:
(1) Artefact Collection There are four ways in which My Community collects artefacts, photographs and objects for our community archives: (1) Door-to-Door Befriending (2) Artefact Collection Drive (3) Emails (4) Donation.
(2) Volunteer Archivist Recruitment and Capacity Building Workshops My Community will also help recruit a professional archivist as well as volunteers who will assist with setting up the archive. Capacity building workshops on oral history interviews, information management system and masterclasses on Wikidata will be co-organised between My Community and Wikimedia community to help with skills transfer and build ownership to the archive.
(3) Seminars We will organise seminars, workshops and outreach activities to involve more residents and volunteers in co-managing the archives. We hope to present our website to the Wikimedia community in 2024.
(4) Volunteer Engagement Programme My Community organises very regular volunteer engagement programmes for our volunteers and residents.
12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?
Inclusivity: Our community archives provide a platform for different community stakeholders to contribute their knowledge. There are four ways in which My Community collects artefacts, photographs and objects for our community archives: (1) Door-to-Door Befriending (2) Artefact Collection Drive (3) Emails (4) Donation. These channels allow us to reach out to people of different age groups, language, cultural background, ethnicity, religion and race without discriminating against any community.
Community-centric: All artefacts donated are assessed based on a set of metrics defined by the community. They are assessed for its cultural significance by 5 or more trained residents and volunteers. Resident involvement in the collection development builds consciousness and empowers them to decide whether to collect the artefact on behalf of the community. Our Museum Collection Development Policy is published and reviewed at least once every five years to ensure recency.
Accessibility: My Community’s community archives will be free-to-use and publicly accessible on our website. Capacity building workshops on oral history interviews, information management system and masterclasses on Wikidata will be co-organised between My Community and Wikimedia community to help with skills transfer and build ownership to the archive.
13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?
Yes
13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.
My Community would like to work with the Wikimedia Foundation to develop, digitise, and expand our community archive. An alliance with the Wikimedia Movement allows us to tap on Wikimedia’s technical and organisational infrastructure to develop a digital archive with a searchable catalogue. We hope to tap on its database infrastructure (via Wikibase) and media depository (via Wikimedia Commons). We also wish to consult existing members from the Wikimedia community and learn about current best practices.
We will work with Wikimedia community to publicise this proposal through (1) Our regional officer, who will link us up to the different wikimedia champions in the region (2) Publicity through mainstream and social media (3) Participation in the local chapter of the Wikimedia Community
14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?
No
14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.
N/A
15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?
With Wikimedia’s funding, we can organise capacity building workshops and outreach activities to involve more residents and volunteers in co-managing the archives. Crowdpooling of knowledge and manpower reduces excess costs to maintain the archives in the long run.
16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.
- There may be some tasks which require advanced technical expertise (e.g. using Wikidata’s SPARQL querying language). To mitigate this issue, we have befriended members from the Wikimedia community who have accomplished similar projects. We have also brought together a dedicated team of volunteers from diverse backgrounds (e.g. former archivists, librarians). Together with our region’s lead program officer, we will be able to plan for or troubleshoot these issues better.
17. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Provide for Safety and Inclusion, Coordinate Across Stakeholders
18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.
- Yes
Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation[edit]
19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?
24. What do you hope to learn from this proposal? (help): We hope to learn on the following: (1) Create a community archive based on Wikidata and Wikibase where residents and researchers can access archival information on our communities freely and easily. Using Queenstown, Singapore's first neighbourhood as a prototype, we hope to expand the work to other towns in the future
20. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following space provided.
| Main Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of New Wikimedia Entries | Number of New Wikimedia Entries | 1000 |
| Number of Unique Users | Number of Unique Users | 1000 |
| N/A | N/A | |
| N/A | ||
| N/A |
Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | Number of Wikimedia editors | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A |
21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.
| Core metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | Number of archivist volunteers (returning) who use Wikidata and Wikibase for the community archives = 20
Number of archivist volunteers (new) who use Wikidata and Wikibase for the community archives = 30 Number of residents, enthusiasts and others who participate in our events or outreach programmes = 200 |
250 |
| Number of editors | N/A | 15 |
| Number of organizers | N/A | N/A |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Wikimedia Commons | Number of Wikimedia Entries | 1000 |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.
N/A
22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?
For the metrics listed on 25., we will try and use Events Metrics, Programmes & Events Dashboard. For the additional information collected on 26., a survey or/and focus group discussion with the volunteers and participants will be held
Financial Proposal[edit]
23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.
- 38888 SGD
23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?
- 28678.15 USD
23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.
23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.
- N/A
Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.
- Other public document(s):
Final Message[edit]
By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.
We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
- Yes
Feedback[edit]
- Please add any feedback to the grant discussion page only. Any feedback added here will be removed.
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